An expanding guide to the buildings, structures and places that help tell the story of Galashiels.
The directory is a general reference guide to Galashiels’ early settlement, religious life, textile industry, civic and commercial buildings, housing, transport, education, recreation and modern cultural architecture. It sits alongside the site’s separate records of buildings at risk and lost buildings.
Some entries offer companion information for places on or near the official Galashiels Town Trail; see Beyond the Town Trail for that independent, complementary material.
Helpful links: Heritage Map · Historic Maps · Glossary · Significance Scoring · Site Index
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Directory Entries
The entries are grouped by theme and arranged alphabetically within each theme. For alphabetising, introductory words such as “Former” and “The” are disregarded.
Browse by theme: Origins, Estates and Early Settlement · Religion and Burial · Mills, Industry and Infrastructure · Civic, Cultural and Community Life · Commerce and the Town Centre · Houses and Neighbourhoods · Transport and Bridges · Sport and Recreation · Education and Modern Institutions
Origins, Estates and Early Settlement
Early settlement, estate landscapes and the surviving places that connect modern Galashiels with its older rural and burgh history.
Buckholm Tower
Date / main phases: Probably 1582, with later additions
A late sixteenth-century tower house and barmkin overlooking Gala Water, closely associated with the Pringle family.
Lindean Parish Church Site and Lindean Cottages
Date / main phases: Medieval parish association; Lindean Cottages and Smithy listed by HES as mid-19th century
A reminder that Galashiels’ parish story begins outside the modern town centre, while the listed cottages record a later rural estate landscape.
Old Gala House
Date / main phases: 1583, 1611, c.1632 and c.1830 main visible phases
One of the oldest and most layered surviving buildings in Galashiels, associated with the Pringles and the Scotts of Gala, and now an important museum and public venue.
Scott Park Gate Lodge and Gateway
Date / main phases: 1881
This compact 1881 lodge and its elaborate gates are a finely crafted remnant of the approach to New Gala House and a key survivor of the former Gala House policies.
Torwoodlee Broch and Hillfort
Date / main phases: Iron Age; multiple phases
A rare southern broch built within an earlier hillfort, preserving evidence for Iron Age settlement and power above the Gala valley.
Torwoodlee House
Date / main phases: About 1783; later Victorian porch
A Category A Georgian country house of about 1783, built as the Pringles left their seventeenth-century tower for a new polite residence.
Torwoodlee Tower and Terraced Garden
Date / main phases: 1601; abandoned in the later 18th century
The nationally important remains of George Pringle’s 1601 tower house retain rare terraces, courtyard and garden evidence.
See also: lost buildings
Religion and Burial
Churches, meeting houses, associated buildings and burial landscapes representing the town’s varied religious life.
Chapel Street and the Site of the First Roman Catholic Chapel
Date / main phases: Nineteenth-century street group; chapel and school opened 1853; chapel later lost
A modest whinstone street group preserving part of the Stirling Street layout beside the site of Galashiels’ first dedicated Roman Catholic chapel and school.
Eastlands Cemetery
Date / main phases: 19th century onwards
A major burial landscape recording generations of Galashiels families, civic life, military service and changing memorial practice.
Gala Aisle and Old Churchyard
Date / main phases: 1636 aisle; associated kirk from 1617; restored 1992
A historically rich site preserving the memory of parish life, burial, family history and the vanished older church buildings of Galashiels.
Galashiels Baptist Church, Victoria Street
Date / main phases: Worshipping group traced to 1782; independent Baptist congregation formed in 1804; present Victoria Street building dated to 1882 in secondary church history
A long-lived Baptist congregation whose building history records dissenting worship, growth, division and reunion in Galashiels.
Former Glasite Chapel / Kail Kirk
Date / main phases: c.1842
A rare surviving Glasite meeting house on Botany Lane, combining religious, social and industrial landscape significance.
MacArts, Former Ladhope Free Church and Halls
Date / main phases: McKissack and Rowan, 1885; opened 1 October 1885; later hall addition and spire removal
A listed former Ladhope Free Church and halls, now reused as one of Galashiels’ active live-music and arts venues.
Manses of Galashiels: Ministers, Congregations and the Growing Town
Date / main phases: Principally eighteenth to late nineteenth century, with later changes of use
A thematic guide to the houses provided for Galashiels ministers and to the wider roles played by figures such as Henry Davidson, Dr Robert Douglas and Robert Blair.
Old Parish and St Paul’s Church, Scott Crescent
Date / main phases: Hay and Henderson, 1881; steeple added 1886; church hall by Waddell and Young, 1927
A major Category B listed Gothic Revival church, built as St Paul’s and later inheriting the Old Parish role after the closure of the older parish church.
Old Parish Manse, Barr Road
Date / main phases: About 1882
A Category C listed former manse whose house, stables, courtyard, boundaries and hillside setting preserve an unusually complete Victorian domestic and ecclesiastical group.
Our Lady and St Andrew’s Roman Catholic Church and Presbytery
Date / main phases: William Wardell, 1856-58; extended 1866-72 by Goldie and Childe; further chapel additions recorded in 1873
A Category B listed Roman Catholic church and presbytery, giving Galashiels’ church heritage an essential Catholic dimension.
Former Salvation Army Citadel, Overhaugh Street
Date / main phases: Late 19th century
A listed former Salvation Army mission hall showing the religious and social landscape of industrial Galashiels.
St John’s Church, Langlee
Date / main phases: 1970-71
A modern church-and-hall complex by Wheeler and Sproson, created as a place of worship and community focus for the developing Langlee estate.
St Peter’s Episcopal Church
Date / main phases: 1853 nave; 1881 chancel and south aisle; c.1920 Lorimer altar
A listed mid-19th-century Episcopal church with strong Gothic Revival, educational and social-history interest.
Former St Peter’s Hall, Abbotsford Road
Date / main phases: Hay and Henderson, 1889
A listed former church hall by Hay and Henderson, completing the St Peter’s Episcopal group on Abbotsford Road.
Trinity Church and Halls, High Street
Date / main phases: Built 1844; enlarged and remodelled by Corson and Aitken in 1868; internally remodelled with new halls in 1928
A Category B listed High Street church group connecting secession worship, later Church of Scotland union and twentieth-century congregational life.
See also: lost buildings
Mills, Industry and Infrastructure
Textile mills, workshops, water systems and supporting trades that shaped Galashiels as an industrial town.
Further research: the Old Gala Club’s detailed study, The Owners and Business Affairs of the Galashiels Mills, provides valuable context for the individual industrial sites listed below.
Anderson’s Chambers, Market Street
Date / main phases: Later 19th century
A substantial listed former warehouse and office building close to the railway, illustrating the commercial infrastructure behind Galashiels’ textile economy.
Botany Mill / High Mill, Roxburgh Street
Date / main phases: Probably c.1870-1880, on the site of earlier mill buildings
A surviving listed mill building in the Botany/Roxburgh Street industrial area, associated with Galashiels’ textile-manufacturing landscape.
Bristol Mill
Date / main phases: 1885, with 1890 lodge and c.1920 additions
A substantial surviving textile mill complex that helps explain why modern Galashiels grew as a manufacturing town.
Former Engineering Workshop and House, Roxburgh Street and Union Street
Date / main phases: Mid-19th to early 20th century
A rare surviving small engineering works associated with Robert Herbert and Sons, showing the specialist trades that kept the textile town’s machinery and buildings working.
Gala Mill, Huddersfield Street
Date / main phases: Founded 1826; earlier 19th century to early 20th century complex
A Category B listed textile complex, founded in 1826 and among the most intact surviving mill complexes in Galashiels.
Gala Mill Lade and Round Tree Bridge
Date / main phases: later 19th-century bridge; pillars dated 1907
A compact surviving reminder that Galashiels’ industrial story was shaped by water management as well as by mill buildings.
Galafoot Waste-Water Treatment Works
Date / main phases: Principal buildings dated 1910; works completed by 1912
Completed in the early twentieth century after prolonged civic debate, Galafoot combined modern sewage treatment with unusually accomplished architectural treatment of its principal buildings.
George Sutherland and Sons' Stonemasons' Yard, 3–5 Albert Place
Date / main phases: Probably c.1900; exact phases uncertain
A rare surviving workshop complex that reveals how Galashiels' carved stone, monuments and architectural details were designed, cut, polished and moved.
Former Hand Loom Shop, 23 Bridge Street
Date / main phases: earlier 19th century
A valuable reminder that the textile story of Galashiels was not only a story of large mills, but also of smaller workshops, skill and labour.
Former Hand-Loom Mill, Riverside House, Ladhope Vale
Date / main phases: Earlier to mid-19th century
A rare five-storey hand-loom mill that preserves the transitional world between workshop weaving and the fully mechanised textile factory.
Former High Tweed Mill and The Pirns, King Street
Date / main phases: From 1852; principal surviving ranges mainly later 19th century
The surviving ranges of Tweed Mill recall Galashiels' first factory powered entirely by steam and preserve an unusually important chapter in the technological development of the town's woollen industry.
Meigle Hill Reservoir and Circular Tank
Date / main phases: Late 19th century, probably associated with the 1870s water scheme
A late nineteenth-century water-supply complex whose solid masonry records the public-health infrastructure required by a rapidly expanding industrial town.
Morrison and Murray Engineering Works, Roxburgh Street and Botany Lane
Date / main phases: Mid-to-late 19th century; associated with Sanderson and Murray, established 1844
A listed engineering and storage complex within the Botany industrial group, linking textile manufacture with allied trades.
Netherdale Mill, Dale Street
Date / main phases: Dated 1873; earlier high mill nearby built 1857; later 19th-century additions to the wider complex
A Category B listed high mill and one of the strongest surviving monuments to Galashiels’ textile industry.
Old Cloth Hall, 23 Scott Crescent
Date / main phases: 1792; later additions and alterations; converted to flats in the later 20th century
A rare survivor from the formative years of Galashiels’ textile industry, built as a warehouse and trading centre for locally made cloth and later used as a public house, bank and housing.
Paton Street Drill Hall, Former Mid Mill Offices
Date / main phases: Mid Mill offices, later 19th century; Territorial Force use from 1908
Created as offices for Mid Mill and taken over by the Territorial Force in 1908, this building links the industrial and military histories of Galashiels in a single surviving place.
See also: lost buildings
Civic, Cultural and Community Life
Public administration, gathering places, memorials, cultural venues and buildings associated with organised community life.
Bank Street Gardens
Date / main phases: 1907 entrance pillars; land acquired 1939–65; post-war garden layout
A town-centre public garden created through gifts of land, civic improvement and Alfred T. Harrison’s landscape proposals, with the Mill Lade passing behind it.
Border Reiver Monument, Cornmill Square
Date / main phases: 1925
Thomas J. Clapperton's 1925 equestrian Border Reiver is a powerful work of public sculpture by a Galashiels-born artist and a central element of the town's war-memorial ensemble.
Burgh Chambers and Clock Tower
Date / main phases: 1867, with 1924-27 Lorimer additions and 1976 extension
The architectural expression of Galashiels’ civic confidence, combining municipal government, memorial function and landmark presence.
Bust of Robert Burns, Lawyer's Brae
Date / main phases: 1912
This 1912 bronze by F. W. Doyle-Jones commemorates Burns's reworking of “Braw Lads o' Galla Water” and gives Galashiels' literary identity a visible place in its civic centre.
Cornmill Square Fountain
Date / main phases: 1912-13
Robert Lorimer’s 1912-13 fountain turns a working remnant of the mill lade into one of Galashiels’ most distinctive civic spaces.
Former Galashiels Liberal Club, 42 Bank Street
Date / main phases: Later 19th century; major interior alterations in 1935-36; later 20th-century rear additions
A listed former political and working-men’s club whose snooker rooms, bathing facilities and civic activity reveal a rich strand of Galashiels’ social history.
Galashiels British Legion Club, 22 Park Street
Date / main phases: British Legion premises documented by 1960; continuing club use
A socially important ex-service club associated with remembrance, fellowship, support and wider community gathering.
Former Galashiels Combination Poorhouse, Kirkbrae
Date / main phases: Built 1859-60; Windyknowe Public Assistance Institution after 1930; Eildon View Home from 1950; later adapted as Galashiels Nursing Home
A substantial surviving poor-law institution by James Campbell Walker, important for the architectural and social history of welfare and care across several Borders parishes.
Galashiels Library, Lawyers Brae
Date / main phases: dated 1873; opened 9 October 1874; extended 1889, with later additions and alterations
A Category C listed purpose-built free public library by Hay and Henderson, funded by public subscription and still serving the community on Lawyer’s Brae.
Galashiels War Memorial
Date / main phases: 1924-27; officially unveiled 4 October 1925; later Second World War panels; commemorative torch added in 2020
Sir Robert Lorimer’s remarkable civic memorial combines a keep-like tower, clock, bells, inscribed panels and sculpture with work by Galashiels-born artists Thomas J. Clapperton and David Sutherland.
Great Tapestry of Scotland Centre
Date / main phases: Opened 21 August 2021; purpose-built gallery and visitor centre by Page/Park Architects
A twenty-first-century cultural building created to house a national community artwork in the centre of Galashiels.
Hayward Hall, St John Street
Date / main phases: Later 19th century with 20th-century additions
A listed Gothic-style public hall that strengthens the civic and community-building story around St John Street.
Langlee Community Centre
Date / main phases: Built in 1971 as Easter Langlee Primary School; community-centre use from 1985
An adaptable former school whose long community use makes it an important part of Langlee’s social infrastructure.
Mercat Cross, Scott Crescent
Date / main phases: 1695; restored 1887 and 1987
Dated 1695 and twice substantially restored, the Mercat Cross is one of the clearest surviving links between present-day Galashiels and the civic life of the old burgh.
Pavilion Cinema, Market Street
Date / main phases: opened in 1922 as the Playhouse, according to published summaries
The town’s surviving cinema building, important for the twentieth-century leisure history of Galashiels and the continuing presence of cinema in the town centre.
Sir Walter Scott Monument, Cornmill Square
Date / main phases: Thomas J. Clapperton, 1932
A listed Cornmill Square monument linking Galashiels with Sir Walter Scott and the town’s formal civic landscape.
Former Unionist Club, 69 High Street
Date / main phases: 1897, with later additions
Andrew Black's richly detailed 1897 club building preserves the architecture of organised political and social life in late-Victorian Galashiels.
Volunteer Hall, St John Street
Date / main phases: Dated 1874; formally opened 17 June 1875; later additions and stage alterations
A purpose-built listed drill hall connected with volunteering, public assembly, theatre, cinema and local civic life.
See also: lost buildings
Commerce and the Town Centre
Banks, hotels, shops, offices and commercial groups that give the centre of Galashiels much of its architectural character.
81–83 High Street
Date / main phases: 1884; altered shopfronts in about the 1950s and later 20th century
A red-sandstone commercial tenement by A. G. Sydney Mitchell, built as an extension to the neighbouring Commercial Bank and distinguished by its curved corner turret.
94–96 Overhaugh Street: Shop and House
Date / main phases: Building documented on the plot by 1824; rear range enlarged in the later nineteenth century
An early shop-and-house building that helps explain Overhaugh Street before the town’s later Victorian rebuilding, with a later rear range and surviving cobbled yard.
The Auld Mill Inn, 57-58 Bank Street
Date / main phases: Earlier 19th century; later 19th-century facade
An earlier nineteenth-century building with a later public-house frontage and unusually important surviving bar fittings.
Bank of Scotland, 3–7 Channel Street
Date / main phases: Peddie and Kinnear, 1864; twentieth-century side and rear extensions
A Category C listed classical bank in local whinstone, important as an early formal landmark in the development of Channel Street and still serving its original banking function.
Bank Street Listed Buildings Group
Date / main phases: Mainly nineteenth-century commercial phases; individual dates vary by building
A town-centre streetscape group showing Galashiels’ commercial confidence in stone, shopfronts, banks and public houses.
Former British Linen Bank, 46–48 High Street
Date / main phases: 1880; shopfront probably c.1900
Wardrop and Reid's dignified 1880 bank and manager's house demonstrates how financial institutions gave architectural form to the wealth and commercial confidence of Victorian Galashiels.
Former Commercial Bank, 79 High Street
Date / main phases: 1869
David Rhind’s 1869 palazzo-style bank is a compact but accomplished expression of Galashiels’ Victorian commercial growth.
Former Co-operative Department Store, High Street and Roxburgh Street
Date / main phases: Dated 1888, by J. and J. Hall; later conversion and alteration
A landmark listed former co-operative store, recording both the retail confidence and the social history of working Galashiels.
Corner House, 62 Bank Street
Date / main phases: Early 20th century
A compact early twentieth-century commercial building created by street widening on the former site of the King’s Temperance Hotel.
Former Douglas Hotel and Channel Street Buildings
Date / main phases: c.1890, by J. and J. Hall; later alteration and conversion
A listed former hotel and commercial building that reflects the confidence of late 19th-century Galashiels.
The Harrow Inn, High Street and Sime Place
Date / main phases: dated 1868; earlier inn shown on the 1858 town plan
A Category C listed purpose-built public house, now Cafe Auberge, especially important for its carefully restored historic interior woodwork and surviving nineteenth-century bar interior.
Former King’s Hotel, 56 Market Street
Date / main phases: Circa 1905 in the HES listing; New King’s Hotel locally recorded as opening in 1911
A Category C listed former hotel whose contrasting stonework, dormers and animated roofline make a major contribution to Market Street.
Former Maxwell Hotel, Bridge Street
Date / main phases: Later 19th century
A tall late nineteenth-century hotel whose classical facade and emphatic roofline announced arrival in the expanding Victorian town.
Former Post Office, 1 Channel Street
Date / main phases: dated 1894
A prominent public-service building that helps explain Channel Street as a civic and commercial address.
Former Royal Bank of Scotland, 112 High Street
Date / main phases: 1923
J. and J. Hall’s 1923 classical corner bank combines a formal banking hall with flats above and remains a strong landmark at the northern approach to the commercial centre.
Former Waverley Temperance Hotel, Channel Street
Date / main phases: Locally recorded as erected in 1895; operating by 1903
A surviving commercial frontage with old hotel lettering, recalling temperance, travel and hospitality in Channel Street.
Former Woolworths, 25 Channel Street
Date / main phases: Opened 1932; Woolworths closed 2008; Home Bargains occupied the premises from 2009 to 2018
A broad-fronted interwar store that records more than seventy-five years of Woolworths trading and the arrival of national multiple retailing in Galashiels.
Victoria Buildings, High Street and Channel Street
Date / main phases: Present building dated 1927, associated with widening of High Street; predecessor probably dated to the 1880s
A prominent listed inter-war commercial corner block, marking the meeting of High Street and Channel Street.
Houses and Neighbourhoods
Individual houses, villas, workers’ housing and planned neighbourhoods that reveal how different generations lived in the town.
Abbotsford Road Villas
Date / main phases: Mainly nineteenth-century villa phases; individual dates vary
A group entry for the villas and substantial houses that show how textile-era prosperity shaped the edges of Galashiels.
Abbotshill Lodge and Gateway, 54 Abbotsford Road
Date / main phases: 1874
William Hay's picturesque 1874 lodge is the ceremonial entrance to Abbotshill, a miniature estate built for Netherdale mill partner Archibald Cochrane.
Balmoral Place and Avenue Housing
Date / main phases: Scheme drawings dated 1920; later phases include post-war housing
A planned housing landscape recording the municipal response to post-war housing need and the later development of the former Gala House policies.
Buckholmburn House and Boundary Wall
Date / main phases: About 1865; later nineteenth-century bay additions
Built about 1865 for mill owner Henry Brown, Buckholmburn House is a conspicuous early example of the substantial residences created by Galashiels textile manufacturers.
Central Galashiels Artisan Housing and Streetscapes
Date / main phases: Principally nineteenth century, with later alterations
A thematic record of the terraces, tenements, houses, closes and backlands created for the people who sustained the expanding textile town.
Gala Park Artisan Housing
Date / main phases: Mainly later 1870s onward, with later infill and alteration
A substantial late nineteenth-century residential district that expresses the prosperity, independence and urban aspirations of Galashiels' skilled working and lower-middle classes.
Galavale House and Lodge, Former Cottage Hospital
Date / main phases: 1890s: sources give 1893 and 1895; extensions and lodge of 1938
Created in the 1890s as Galashiels Cottage Hospital, this purpose-built complex records the growth of organised local health care and later adaptation for changing NHS services.
Glenmayne House
Date / main phases: 1866; library and gates added in 1913
A commanding Category A Scots Baronial residence designed by Charles Kinnear for pelt-monger John Murray and later enriched by Sir Robert Lorimer.
High Road Edwardian Villas and Town Views
Date / main phases: Chiefly about 1900-1914
Good-quality Edwardian housing on elevated ground, with long views that help explain the topography and changing roofscape of Galashiels.
Kenilworth Avenue Housing
Date / main phases: Site works began in 1953
A particularly legible early phase of Langlee housing, where repeated house types, gardens and a curved street layout create a recognisable neighbourhood.
Kingsknowes Hotel, Former Kingsknowes House
Date / main phases: 1868-69; later work c.1905-11
Built in 1868-69 for Netherdale mill owner Adam Lees Cochrane, Kingsknowes is one of Galashiels' most elaborate mill-owner houses and an outstanding Category A example of William Hay's Scots Baronial architecture.
Langlee Estate
Date / main phases: Development began in the 1950s; major phases in the 1960s and early 1970s
Galashiels’ largest post-war housing landscape, created for regional growth and later substantially remodelled through regeneration and community investment.
Lucy Sanderson Cottage Homes and Ida Hayward Cottages
Date / main phases: 1930-33; sick bay adapted as Ida Hayward Cottages in 1960
A Category B listed sheltered-housing complex for retired mill-workers, arranged around a village green and noted by HES as an early Scottish example of its type.
Melrose Road Villas and Eastern Approach
Date / main phases: Principally later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
A suburban corridor of villas, institutions and later housing that records the eastward growth of Galashiels towards Langlee.
Parsonage Road Villas and Streetscape
Date / main phases: Substantial residences documented by the 1890s; school plans 1936; later change
A short residential street off Abbotsford Road whose named houses, garden plots and school record late-Victorian prosperity and layered twentieth-century growth.
Pollenca, 23 and 23A Abbotsford Road
Date / main phases: 19th century, with later alterations
A substantial nineteenth-century villa whose later subdivision helps explain the changing life of Abbotsford Road’s mill-owner houses.
Rowanlee, 22 Abbotsford Road
Date / main phases: Circa 1855, with later additions and alterations
A carefully restored classical villa whose restrained exterior and rich interior detailing illuminate an early phase of Abbotsford Road’s development.
Rowantree Butts, Kirk Brae
Date / main phases: 1869; later additions including a greenhouse of about 1915
Built in 1869 for manufacturer and MP Adam Brown, Rowantree Butts is a substantial classical villa whose house, coach house, garden structures and boundaries form an unusually complete group.
Scott Crescent Heritage Group
Date / main phases: Mixed phases from early town history to nineteenth-century civic and domestic development
A planned-feeling historic townscape around Old Gala House, church buildings, the Old Cloth Hall and public open space.
Tea Street Workers’ Housing
Date / main phases: Early 19th century, with later additions and alterations including changes around c.1970
A listed row of early 19th-century cottages that preserves a rare fragment of everyday housing in old Galashiels.
Thorniedean House
Date / main phases: About 1868; later educational and public uses
A substantial Category C listed manufacturer’s villa whose later history connects wartime education, Galashiels Academy, council offices and Borders College.
Willowbush, 17 Abbotsford Road
Date / main phases: 1845
A remarkably accomplished Gothic villa of 1845, built for Mid Mill partner Walter Cochrane at the start of Abbotsford Road’s development.
Woodlands House, Windyknowe Road
Date / main phases: circa 1855; remodelled and enlarged in 1884-85
A Category A listed textile-villa mansion remodelled for James Sanderson, combining architectural ambition, industrial wealth and domestic display.
Transport and Bridges
Railway structures, the modern interchange and bridges that record changing patterns of movement through Galashiels.
Boleside Road Railway Footbridge
Date / main phases: Early 20th century; first clearly shown on 1930 mapping
An early twentieth-century steel footbridge over the former Selkirk branch line, preserving one of the few structural traces of Galashiels’ earlier railway network.
Galafoot Railway Viaduct over the Tweed
Date / main phases: c.1849, built for the North British Railway
A Category B listed railway viaduct over the Tweed, marking the engineering and transport history that helped reshape Galashiels.
Galashiels Railway Station and Transport Interchange
Date / main phases: Original station opened 20 February 1849; closed 5 January 1969; current station reopened 6 September 2015; transport interchange opened August 2015
The modern station and interchange represent both the loss of the Waverley Route and the twenty-first-century return of rail to Galashiels.
Ladhope Bridge
Date / main phases: 1815; rebuilt 1889
The ‘Stane Brig’ carries a historic route across Gala Water and preserves the memory of an 1815 crossing rebuilt in 1889.
Sport and Recreation
Buildings and structures associated with organised sport and shared leisure.
Gala Fairydean Football Stand, Netherdale
Date / main phases: 1963-65
A nationally significant modern structure by Peter Womersley, combining bold concrete architecture with local sporting memory.
Galashiels Bowling Club, Scott Crescent
Date / main phases: 1883; altered 1930-31
A Category C listed late Victorian bowling pavilion beside Old Gala House, notable for its Arts and Crafts character, social-history value and relationship to the former Old Gala House garden setting.
Education and Modern Institutions
Schools, colleges and institutional buildings illustrating the development of education from the nineteenth century to the present.
Burgh Primary School, Gala Park
Date / main phases: John Starforth, 1875; enlarged 1882; further additions and alterations in 1934
A listed Board School-era building showing how education expanded with the population of Victorian Galashiels.
Heriot-Watt Scottish Borders Campus
Date / main phases: Institutional roots in textile education from 1883; Scottish College of Textiles named 1968; merger with Heriot-Watt in 1998; campus later developed with Borders College
A modern educational campus that carries forward Galashiels’ textile identity into design, teaching and research.
Former Schoolhouse, 67 Gala Park
Date / main phases: 1874-75; extended 1894-95
John Starforth’s finely detailed 1874-75 schoolhouse forms an important surviving pair with Burgh Primary School.
Scottish Woollen Technical College Gate Lodge and Gates
Date / main phases: Early 20th century association; exact construction date not confirmed
The surviving lodge and gates at 53 Market Street preserve the entrance to the former Scottish Woollen Technical College and give physical presence to an important educational site after major change.
St Margaret’s RC Primary School
Date / main phases: Opened 17 October 1967
A purpose-built post-war school serving Galashiels’ Roman Catholic community and marking the expansion of housing into the former Gala House policies.
Former St Peter’s School and Schoolhouse, Abbotsford Road
Date / main phases: 1859
A listed pre-Board School complex associated with St Peter’s Episcopal Church and the educational history of Galashiels.
See also: lost buildings
- Scottish Woollen Technical College — Lost
- Roxburgh Street School — Lost
- Former Galashiels Academy and Borders College — Lost
How Entries Are Assessed
Each directory entry uses a consistent format: quick facts, a short explanation of why the place matters, things to notice, significance scores, uncertainties and sources. The scores are editorial guide scores for public interpretation, not statutory designations.
- Architectural interest
- Historical importance
- Social significance
- Rarity
- Townscape contribution
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